Looking for a Summer Read?

A year has gone by since I joined not one, but two book clubs here in The Land of Fruit. I've been keeping a list of the books I've read and after looking through it, I realize why my house is not as clean as it could be. Maybe I should clean more and read less?

Book Club #1
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons: a Novel (Lorna Landvik)
The Island (Victoria Hislop)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
Wicked (Gregory Maguire)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch)
Thunderstruck (Erik Larson)
Queen of the Road (Doreen Orion)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
The 13th Tale (Diane Setterfield)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Skeletons at the Feast (Chris Bohjalian)

Book Club #2
Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)
New Moon (Stephenie Meyer)
The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch)
The 13th Tale (Diane Setterfield)
Time of My Life (Alison Winn-Scott)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Truman Capote)
Watermelon (Marian Keyes)
The Memory of Water (Karen White)
Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy (Robert Leleux)

For Fun
Eclipse (Stephenie Meyer)
Breaking Dawn (Stephenie Meyer)
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
19 Minutes (Jodie Picoult)
The Testament (John Grisham)
Angel (Marian Keyes)
The Appeal (John Grisham)
The Jane Austen Book Club (Karen Joy Fowler)
Midwives (Chris Bohjalian)

I know, I know, I should have italicized or underlined the titles (and a really nice blogger would hyperlink the titles to their descriptions), but I'm on a nap time deadline.

The book with a line through it is one I was supposed to read, but I never got to it since the library's waiting list for it is six months or more. And I do realize that two of the books repeat on the lists. Both of my book clubs read them, but I will admit that I did not read them twice.

There were some definite winners among the books: The 13th Tale, To Kill a Mockingbird, Skeletons at the Feast, A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Kite Runner, The Island, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I'd highly recommend any of these for a fabulous summer read.

There some so-so books: Wicked, 19 Minutes, The Twilight Series (don't hate me for that one!), The Woman in White, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Jane Austen Book Club, Midwives. I liked these books, but they're not the kind I'd read over and over again.

There were some I really enjoyed re-reading: The Great Gatsby, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird. I definitely got a lot more out of them this time around. I hadn't read them since high school and all three took on whole new meanings for me.

And then there was a total stinker: Thunderstruck. It's either a love it/hate it book - I fell into the hate it category. I normally adore historical fiction, but this one was just too detailed and uninteresting to me.

The rest fell somewhere in the middle, I guess.

So, I'm on to Year Two of book clubbin' it. With any luck I'll be able to add 30 more books to my list by this time next year.

Happy reading!